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Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Cable Knit Baby Blanket

Woohoo! I thought this day would never come... I finally finished my first real knitting project! I started knitting it on Valentines Day, the day I had the ultrasound and found out I was having a girl. Seven months later and here she is:

So, details...

I followed the Luca baby blanket pattern found HERE and on Ravelry. I used size US8/5mm circular needles and Caron Simply Soft yarn in the hottest pink color they had. :)

Like I said, this was my first knitting project. I started out not even knowing how to knit and pearl, much less cable. Youtube to the rescue! I watched THIS video and became a cabling pro. The pattern says C8B. That means you slip four stitches onto the cable needle, move them behind your work, knit four more stitches, then put the first four stitches back onto the original needle and knit them. That makes them twist into the cable shape.

One of the hardest parts of this project was keeping track of my rows so that I cabled at the right times. I made a handy little color-coded chart and crossed a line off each time I finished a row:

It has been fun learning how to knit. Knitting is very different from crochet and I have to admit, I have fallen in love with it! I feel like knitting is made of loops so it's more stretchy and more like fabric. Crochet is made of knots and it's more like lace. Crochet is faster and easier and knitting takes much longer. But they are both fun and I'm glad I have the versatility of doing both.

Technically, you could knit this project on straight needles. The problem is that they would have to be really long to fit such a large project, and I've found that really long knitting needles are awkward to use. Circular needles allow plenty of space for the bulk of the blanket without interfering with the working area.